“You came for me,” I whisper, my eyes fluttering open to lock on his again. “In the storm. It was dangerous and you?—”
“There was never a world where I didn’t,” he said quietly, his thumb brushing slowly over my hand.
“But you…you sent me away.”
I see the shift on his face, the pain in his eyes. “I know,” he says, his voice rough. “I’m so sorry, Lilly. I never should have…I pushed you…I didn’t…dammit.” He runs his free hand over his face and tugs on his beard for a moment. “I’m screwing this up again.”
A memory flickers through the fog.
His voice, low and rough, cut through the storm. “You said…” my voice falters slightly, but I don’t look away. I need to be sure I wasn’t imagining it. “You said you loved me.”
“I do,” he says without hesitation. “I love you, Lilly. I’ve been fighting it, trying to convince myself I was doing the right thing by pushing you away, but the thought of losing you…hell. I’ve never been so scared, sweetheart. When I saw your car down there, and you were…” he sucks in a breath. “I thought I’d lost you, Lilly.”
I turn my hand around and squeeze his fingers. “You didn’t.”
“No.” He blows out a breath. “Thank God. If anything happened to you, I couldn’t live with myself, Lilly. Knowing I pushed you away and drove you into the storm.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know what I would have?—”
“Nothing happened,” I stop him. “I’m fine.” When I try to shift, the sharp pain in my ribs keeps me down. “Well, maybe I’m notfine,” I admit, a small smile tugging at my lips. “But I will be.”
Relief washes over his face, but there’s still something I need to be sure of. “Is it real?”
His brow furrows. “Is what real, sweetheart?”
“This,” I say softly. “You. Me. When you…well, earlier, I thought. Maybe what I was feeling wasn’t real. That maybe you didn’t?—”
His grip tightens, his other hand coming to carefully cup my face, his touch gentle as if he’s afraid he’ll hurt me.
“It was always real,” he interrupts me. “Every single second. I was just too damn scared to hold onto it.”
The last piece of doubt melts away.
I can see the truth in his eyes.
The way he’s holding me.
“Lilly…” his thumb brushes across my cheek, catching the tear I didn’t realize had fallen. “I don’t just love you. I want a life with you. I want you to stay on the mountain with me. Together, we can build…well, we can build it all, sweetheart.” I close my eyes, another tear slipping down my cheek, his words wrapping around me. “A business,” he continues. “A life, a family, if that’s what you want. And all the messy bits in between.” His voice is rough. “I know after the way I handled all this, I don’t deserve you. But I’ll spend the rest of my life proving you’re the most important thing in mine. Because you are Lilly, you always will be.”
Emotion swells in my chest. I tighten my hold on his hand.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” I say softly. “You just have to love me.”
“I do,” he says it so quickly, I laugh.
“I do, too,” I tell him. “I love you, Luke. I don’t even know when it happened, just that…”
“It did.”
I nod. “It did.”
He kisses me gently, like I might break, and when he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine, his breath warm on my lips.
“Yes,” I say.
He looks up, searching my face, and I smile.
“Yes to you. To us. To all of it.”
Slowly, his smile grows to match mine, something lighter breaking through the mask of intensity he’s been wearing. “Yeah?”
